Many commercial enterprises, municipalities, and other entities own and/or operate fleets of vehicles (e.g., cars, vans, trucks, watercraft, aircraft, etc.). Conventional fleet fueling systems have been developed in order that such vehicles can receive fuel from a designated fueling site without the need for the operator of the vehicle to pay for the fuel in a conventional manner at that time. These fleet fueling systems can track the amount of fuel dispensed to a particular vehicle over time such that fleet managers can consolidate payments to the fuel vendor without any need for operators to keep receipts. Also, such a system can help to ensure that the preferred brand and/or type of fuel is provided to the vehicle, and that such fuel can be purchased at an agreed-upon price.
A vehicle must typically be authorized before the vehicle is allowed to receive fuel from a fleet fueling system. Some fleet systems involve the use of a code and/or card that is presented to the system by an operator in order to begin the authorization process. Other systems involve the use of optical or radio frequency (RF) communication between the system and the vehicle to perform such authorization.
Because many designated fleet fueling sites are intended only to provide fuel to the vehicles of one or more particular fleets, these sites need not provide the amenities typically provided by a consumer gasoline station, as the fleet fueling sites are not competing for customers of the typical consumer gasoline stations. For this reason, fleet fueling systems often involve as little expense as necessary, and accordingly are often not provided with elaborate electronic displays, for example, and typically do not have any human attendant on staff to oversee the fueling operations. However, because budget-oriented fleet fueling systems do not involve such amenities, feedback regarding the authorization or progression of the fueling process is typically not available to an operator, and there are occasions where an operator is left to wonder why there is a delay in his vehicle receiving fuel and/or why the fleet fueling system will not dispense fuel. Accordingly, there is a need for a simple and low-cost supervisory or information/authorization indicia system for a fleet fuel dispensing system, whereby this system conveniently provides acknowledgement of authorization and/or fueling status information to an operator.